CANDIDATES SAY THE DAMNEDEST THINGS-- ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY'RE SENILE AND RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AND NAMED JOHN McCAIN

Maybe McCain just wants to prove that he would be entertaining if we allow him to be president-- at least entertaining the way a car wreck seems to captivate and entertain people with 2-digit IQs. With most potential GOP voters unable to distinguish between the 10 stooges and unenthusiastic about Rudy McRomney, Iowans are stuck with this batch of galoots for months. McCain has probably forgotten what the inside of the Senate even looks like these days and may have to be taught how to vote all over again someday. Polls show that McCain is failing to capture the kind of enthusiasm it will take to beat a pro-choice/pro-gay/pro-gun/pro-immigrant control cross-dresser (in a word: someone from the anti-Republican wing of the Republican Party). And that if Republicans do finally figure out that a transvestite isn't what they have in mind for the White House after saddling us with Bush for 8 years, McCain will lose to either Hillary or Edwards.

McCain has an especially hard row to hoe because even Republicans have started distancing themselves from the BushCheney war agenda, an agenda that has been embraced more strongly by McCain than by anyone else in elected office other than Holy Joe Lieberman (who was rejected by his own party in the Democratic primary). McCain, who gained a degree of popularity by deceptively painting himself as a maverick, has a real problem. How to distance oneself from the most unpopular president in contemporary history and his hated war-- a war you have totally embraced. For all the "maverickness" the press has tried to attribute to him, McCain's voting record is standard, garden variety GOP rubber-stamp fare. And as far as Iraq goes, his voting record is an absolute disgrace to our nation.

So you'd have to be forgiven if you were glancing through your Des Moines Register this morning and you chanced upon (another) bizarre McCain utterance.

McCain also said he didn't think Republicans lost control of Congress or were losing public support because of the Iraq war. Instead, he said, wasteful spending and corruption created voter discontent.

"I know Americans are saddened and frustrated by the sacrifice we have had to make, but we lost the election in 2006 because we betrayed our Republican base," McCain said to applause.

The applause signified agreement that Republican voters, like normal Americans, feel betrayed by the Bush Regime. They don't have to dig too hard to discover that McCain has been a part and parcel of that Regime, rubber stamping all their worst agenda items. And if Republican primary voters are too dense to figure it out, normal Americans aren't.